Main Junction: OPEN MIC -- the Three Act Speakeasy Thread (Closes 22nd July)

@oldhat No matter how much you know, how hard you work, or how much passion you have, some of the people in any established industry you are just entering will always treat you like a joke, and snicker behind their hands. FUCK THOSE PEOPLE. Keep showing up and soon they will just have to accept you're there to stay. YOU ARE THE BEER GODDESS. Believe!

@hatter-You're a hard worker, and still learning. If people can't understand that, and feel you need a gabillion dollars in equipment to know stuff, they can sod off and engage in morally questionable acts involving a broken chainsaw and some used cooking oil. Keep on doing the beer stuff. I like hearing about your adventures with them; and you're a good, accessible form of knowledge for us folks that don't have the time or understanding to even start with that kind of stuff. Kepp on rocking.

Stuck in traffic:Been feeling rough - tired, achey, stiff joints and general crappiness, add in the wettest summer since history began and the overall effect on my mood has been somewhat grim. Even my little bits of recreational photographic fun have been giving me gypp, i've been wrestling with colour and monitor calibration problems and feeling like i'm getting nowhere with any of it. Ok.deep breath - time to calm down and take stock, self criticism can be self destructive if you let it get out of hand. I'm still breathing and life is, compared to my fairly recent past, pretty damn good, humanity has not yet managed to fuck things up completely and there's lots of interesting stuff for me to see before they do. I should stop bloody moaning and get out there, shouldn't i? (By the way, i am still howlingly sorry for what i said about Hex, it wasn't meant the way it sounded and i feel like an utter cunt now. i hope he's ok and really, his world view is more than a bit optimistic compared to mine. Still, mustn't grumble, eh?)

The joys of the open road:The basic necessities are all nicely catered for - enough work to keep me ticking over, but not so much that i've got no time for myself, enough money in the bank to cover my bills and a little left over just for fun and even in all this bloody rain a little bit of sunshine here and there, enough to get out and take a few pictures, even if i do think they're all crap. I try, i fail, i try again. I LEARN! (Well, eventually i suppose) Which brings me to...

Need a lift?Flecky, obviously, because you, sunshine, are a bleedin' hero - the beast has had it's way with you, chewed you up and left you mangled and wrecked in the gutter. You've picked yourself up, wobbling, sick and nearly beaten, and you have kicked the bastard right in the tender bits. Mr Flecky i want you to WIN! Weston's not bad if you get a chance to have a look around, lots of ruddy great scenery and this time of year, dragonflies like you wouldn't believe. See if you can get them to take you down to Brean Down for the day, it'll take your breath away! Life goes up life goes down, rough and smooth, the trick is to keep going, walk, crawl, drag yourself along with your fingers if you have to, just don't stop! I WANT YOU TO WIN!

Oldhat: Brew school? The clue is in the name - you go there to learn stuff. If you knew it all already you wouldn't need to go. Ignore the snarking, you have a most excellent blog, you have been on the telly and therefore are at least a little bit famous and, if you'll pardon me for saying so, you is CUTE! If you've been with someone who makes you smile i'll bet you've been making them smile too! What was that i said about self criticism?

Boo: I'm going through bankruptcy and a bunch of therapy because, hi! I'm Lexie and I'm a walking starving/tortured artist cliche. I'm several thousand miles from a young Scottish lad I fell in love with in London and it will likely be several months before I see him again. I also seem to have lost my photography muse at the moment.

Yay: I made myself some bloomers, recently. I didn't know I could do that. I have lots of time to make things/art at the moment and a part time job in a music venue. After many years of half-heartedly searching, I've discovered male ejaculate that tastes delicious to me. I've perfected both the grilled cheese sandwich and the chocolate chip cookie. And I'm unpacking things I love and haven't seen since 2008 (holy crap old convention photos!).

@oldhat I think you're sexy as fuck. And it's only a little bit because you're a badass beermeister. <3

Got rejected from a Montreal apartment because of my guarantor. Got rejected from a student line-of-credit because of the same guarantor. Really, outrageously, wreaking-a-path-of-destruction-y unhappy about this.

Need a guarantor. I don't know anyone who isn't AT LEAST as poor and miserable as me. Need a guarantor.

The Fuck: I got laid off today. After four years (six if you count the two years as a temp) working for THQ, after moving to Phoenix in order to keep working for THQ, the decision was made to close the Phoenix office and move all QA operations to Montreal. We were told about this on Tuesday and informed that this transition would be taking place over the next few months, with planned completion in mid to late December. Today HR came out and handed us our end date packages and stuff, and my end date was today. The biggest 'fuck you' of all this being that no offer was even made for relocation of my group to Montreal (not that any of us were going to take it if it were offered). Because apparently the people who have liaised with Microsoft on behalf of the company for the past five years can easily be replaced.

The Fuck Yeah(ish): Since the lease on my apartment was up at the end of this month, I now have absolutely nothing tying me to Phoenix. So I can move back home to California, where the hills are green nine months out of the year (and on fire the other three), where there is ocean (that may now be mildly radioactive), and mountains that get snow on them, and friends, and family, and bartenders that know that YOU DO NOT MUDDLE THE FUCKING FRUIT IN AN OLD FASHIONED. I just have to find a place to live ('cuz I ain't moving back in with either of my parents) and get a new job that's commensurate with my old one.

The Hooray For Other People:@Rachael: Hooray for finding someone new you click with! As a fellow self-diagnosed likely autism spectrum person I completely get how fucking hard that is.

Crazy-making: Kinda splashing around in life, not sure how to make myself just fucking pick a direction and go. Have driven myself to distraction trying to come up with what to write on my "About Me" page on my Web site/blog. I try to keep in mind that the idea of the site was to be somewhat professionalish. So my natural inclination to say silly things about myself, make up lies and the occasional sublime nonsense has to step aside. But that leaves me with ...what? boring ass facts? What do I present about myself? And how should I make it get through? Every thing I've ever come up with that is direct and professional comes off as marketing-babble bullshit. But if I don't take myself seriously as a pro, who will? I know it comes down to trying to do too many things (NTM because in practice I get so overwhelmed I end up doing nothing), but it means I don't know which to put at the top. Am I voice actor first? Am I dramaturg first? Am I translator first? A student of a Japanese? A stage manager? Every single one of these requires attention and work and I don't know which should take priority so... too many days I don't do any and my About Me doesn't refer to any such endeavors.

Happy-making: Free and clear of the play and venturing back into performing for my own sake. Improv on the mic last night; wonderful results. Always a treat to impress the teacher and still learn a bunch. I felt really great about my work and know what needs to improve, and the teacher even noted I've improved so much - in a mock-abused way that I did it while away from her. };> A free improv session tonight that was rather a lot of fun, uncovering emotional layers and noting where certain areas were weak, all in a very supportive, thoughtful environment. Another class (all day! in front of a pro I've never met but admire! eek!) on Saturday. A few more classes I need to quickly decide whether or not to take. Feels good to get back on the horse. Now just need to get my shit in order and get to auditioning!

Also have been invited to go see Dead Can Dance with my best friend. fuckfuckfuck YESSS!

Sounds of comfort and I got your back: @allana. Holy shit. If I only did some voodoo so I could hoodoo up some good turns for you. Jebus. All I got are virtual hugs and good thoughts. *hugs*@David - well finally you can get your ass back to LA where you belong. You and Phoenix never got along. Get back to what you were supposed to be doing all this time. Rock it, man.

The project is in the final mad days before we decide to stop fixing the 'cosmetic' bugs and just get the thing out of the door. Everyone is tetchy, and obsessed with the metrics (bug fix rate, fix fail rate, bugs per day and so on). I hate this part of every game I've ever worked on, there's always something that gets found late and while we really want to fix you have to balance risk/reward (any code change can introduce new bugs, fixing something can actually make things worse...) It's the point where the money-men take over really, when you start needing to worry about missing marketing deadlines and so on.

I've been thinking for some time now that I'm probably at the end of this part of my career, that this sort of large team AAA game development has ran it's course for me. There are plenty of younger and more talented people in the studio now than me, and all I really bring to the table is my experience and grouchiness. I'd go off and do indie stuff in a heartbeat if I felt I had a broad enough skillset to do solo game development. But I can't draw or model for shit, and noone wants to buy games with only coder art...

Shiny Happy Place:

Summer is *finally* looking like it'll arrive in the UK this week. The jet stream is moving to where it's meant to be and we'll get a break from the near constant rain. The Olympics start soon, and cause I'm not a Londoner I'm quite looking forward to it. There's a lot of crappy stuff going on around it with all the draconian restrictions on advertising and so on, but I only really care about the sport, and this will be the first of the true 'HD era'. The BBC will have 20 odd live HD streams, so we'll be able to watch any of it we want to.

To Others:

@DavidLejeune - THQ seem to be living on borrowed time at the moment, a real shame cause they have some really good stuff there. It's not a good time to be in AAA games these days is it?

Boo: I just can't seem to write or make pictures at the pace I intend. Everything takes more time than I want it to. Honestly though, THAT'S IT. And that's FUCKING AMAZING.

Hurrah: The mere fact that the boo is so minimal, possibly for the first time since I was about 10 years old. The much larger dose of happy pills are working perfectly. I've been off the booze five months. Things are good with the family. I'm not even tensing for the next hammer blow, as I always have when things have been good for a little while. I'm actually just enjoying what's actually happening, hour to hour. This is... weird. Good, but really, really different to anything I've known.

@Flecky - maybe it feels to you sometimes like you're just venting when you post here, but I for one really appreciate it. To know there are others who have been to Hell and lived to walk the soil again has made it possible sometimes. And I'm here to tell you - man, it can really be better. The old shit, it doesn't totally leave you, but it doesn't have to stain every waking moment either.

Had a fun "losing the track of time while chatting" kind of first date which I already told about elsewhere, been chatting online for a couple of days and planning on two dates later: going to see Batman and exploring an industrial abandonment where you may need to do a runner from the rent-a-cops. Neither of us are looking for anything seriously exclusive now, and I'm happy as a baby in a barrelful of nipples that although if nothing romantic comes out of this, feels like I've found a pal that has so far came across as very fun and interesting. The latter is what I'm after primarily, and if something else happens, double the yay for that. Nevertheless, it's been ages since I've been genuinely enthusiastic about a person this way, and she hasn't pepper sprayed me so far, so yay ^^ (yes that's a fucking anime eye smiley, so sue me ;)

Shitcookie:

It may be that within the next five years or so I'll have to get a cane, a knee operation and if worst comes to worst, both. My left knee is fucked up from the martial arts I did a lot when I was younger, and other assorted acrobatics that don't really fit my physique but I've done nevertheless. It's been worse and better throughout the years, but ever since an... erm... physical discussion a couple of years back, it has been hurting and clicking when I walk. Kneeling through last week in the archaeological dig seemed to really aggravate it, and I've been walking like House for the previous week or so. A few years back when it was really hurting I asked a sports doc about the options, and her opinion was that there's little to do: they can operate, but it's as likely as not to make things just worse faster. Oh well, time to start shopping for that sword cane and trying to grow a dastardly mustache. Or maybe the motherfucker will go *click* again as it did once a few years back and stop hurting. Here's to hoping.

Mosh, damn you, mosh!

@Flabyo: Final crunch, never happy. A lot of coder type people have escaped the AAA treadmill and just found similarly disillusioned artists and writers. That kind of transition might be scary as balls, but many people have managed, and some of them have hit some sort of goldmineish thing with a mobile game or something similar. Why not try it out, and if it doesn't work, by what you've told about your background your CV should make a pretty nice *thunk* on the table if you decide to return to the AAA monkey house.

Unlikely, seeing as this is "mechanical damage". I do have a little bit of, um, overmobile joints, ie. I can pop my shoulder half out of its socket if I so choose to do, but the knee is simply fuxored because of too much bad kicking in martial arty teenage years / early 20's :/

@texture, roo, roadscum & lex: Thanks guys. It's...I don't know. I'm pretty knowledgeable in the process and can talk beer with beer industry folks, but I think in the end I'm just this person with a blog trying stuff when I can afford to and not a "real" beer journo whose job it is to do this stuff and I know that's part of what may be their mindset. As for the school...knowledge in some of the basics of brewing and recipe formulation (my admitted weak point) is needed and expected, so that's why I do need some fancy stuff to get there, but...we'll see, I guess. Regardless, I'm working at it best I can (and when money allows) and getting my name out there, so that's something.

@oldhat having spent a *lot* of time over the last month with 'real' beer/gin/wine journalists... the vast majority of them don't 'know' more than a basic amount either (OK, some of the wine guys have a masterofwines and are *seriously* impressive but they are the exception). I'm completely new (although I kept bar some in my early 20's) & can certainly kick most of the younger chaps to the curb (am 'old' but not *that* old) plus I am nice :-)

So yeah, as Texture says. Plus ime those who do actually know and matter are nice people who don't do that (and indeed share knowledge etc). But that could just be over here where its a tiny tiny gene pool?

@oldhat My experience of breaking into music writing reminds me of the situation you describe in a few ways.

I started working for a free paper in 2005, and did 3 years unpaid as an editor and features writer. As the paper grew, a few people got paying jobs out of it, but I wasn't one of them. I started applying for jobs with other magazines and papers, and was laughed out of the room quite a few times - I was told that working for a free paper didn't count, no matter who I had interviewed, or what skills I had acquired.

A few years down the line, and the paper has grown to be one of the widest-distributed and most-read in Scotland, I'm being paid to work for them as an editor and being paid per feature, and there's a chance they may hire me for a monthly salary in the future. Now, the money's not brilliant, and probably will never be. But to my mind, if you're being paid to do it, that means you're a professional, at least on some level. For example, I can now get accreditation for music festivals, book festivals. One day I may even have an expense account(!).

This all started in 05 when a bunch of people with only a tiny amount of experience all decided: "Fuck it, lets be music journalists." Why am I telling this story? I reckon it illustrates that the only difference between me now, and me in 05, is that I just kept showing up. I stuck around. Eventually I became part of the scenery... Same story really for the magazine.... in 05 we were upstarts, pretenders, a joke to some. Now we sponsor music festivals and club nights, we have links to TV and other media. We're another brand in that landscape, no longer the new kids on the block.

Getting your name out there and sticking with it will pay off eventually, it just may take a while. :) Not discrediting the idea of professional training, degrees, apprenticeships and internships and that kind of thing, at all... I could benefit from all these things. But in my experience, sheer bloody-minded persistence, and passion for your subject, is more important. :)

BOO-HOO! - Broke, lonely (& unpleasantly horny), still haven't recovered from the awesomeness of the North American Trip Thing. Seriously, that was quite possibly the best time. The downside is this immense post-high low that I've been in for a few months now. Not really getting anything done.

WHOO-HOO! - I spent a week at a cabin a while back (whence the pic with the accordion and such) with a friend and, at the end of said week, something seemed to go CLICK! in my brain. And here's what it was: I've been unfortunately still pining for The One That Got Away, and not just now and then, rather fucking daily. No wonder, really, seeing as we'd been together for that 14 years. This was pushing me into more than a little bit of resentment ("Oh great, another dream of us together, thanks for that!") and it really wasn't getting any better. And then: CLICK! (This was also the thing I was talking about on the Vile Hugs thang back there.)

(Now, permit me to be a bit obvious, here.) It's not like she's the one doing this. It's not like I'm not still in love with her. That's not an emotion I can mute so I might as well accept it. That little bit of genius brough about this strange calm that's been going on for a few weeks now. It's really nice. I think I should maybe ask her out for coffee or something to get the détente going.

Here's hoping that bit of enlightenment sticks.

OMENASOSETTA!

@DavidLejeune - Boo at losing the job! Huzzah at getting the hell outta a place that's not doing you any favours.

@allana - Bicycle thieves are the most loathsome human beings. They make me reconsider my absolutist stance against capital punishment. Also, I have one of your microphones in my posession, but a) I DIDN'T STEAL IT, HONEST and b) that's not a capital offence, right? Right? And I'm not sure if I've mentioned this after returning to Finland, but thanks for putting me up / putting up with me on the Toronto leg.

@oldhat - Naysayers gonna say nay. I think in every field expertise has this nasty tendency to breed cynicism and an insular attitude to people and ideas outside that particular expert bubble, or at least I've seen so damn much of that in music. It's an uphill slog, but I think the best payback for that is keeping doing what you're doing.

@Allana It's been almost 6 months since I've had any of it, but my recollection of it is slightly sweet. He's a working class Scot with an atrocious diet, so I have no idea why it's so delicious, but I'm now tempted to go back and taste test the small handful of people I've ever kissed with slightly sweet-to-me breath [some people I can just breathe their exhalation straight in when cuddling close to their face like it's fucking mana] because I believe there might be a link between the two but I've no evidence yet to support that hypothesis whatsoever.

I've been through some muchos magnifikos stuff since I last was on here. After visiting that...rehab, I returned to London in a bad way and went into an awful depression. I spent a week isolating, avoiding everything and committing suicide in my head every twenty minutes or whatever. It was a bad one; suicide by staying in bed and hurling verbal-abuse at crap TV takes far too long. Eventually, I had to face up to things, so I propelled myself back into the world of reality; that was slightly better than living in my madness - I think I only lasted a couple of days, though, then went back into abyss.

It's a fucking good job I threw all of those bastid drugs away a few months ago, or you probably wouldn't be reading this drivel. I'm not being dramatic or anything, just saying how it is - if you don't like it...TOUGH! I hope my corpse makes foul cunt-fart noises as it discharges the diarrhoea-of-death at my one-man wake!

Anyway, whilst being an extra from a Poe story and languishing on my eiderdown of misery, some...foul specimen of humanity who I used to use with, who hasn't even seen me for over THREE years, tried to break into my gaff - I actually caught the horrible fucker stuck halfway through my bathroom window! See, this insect just assumed I'd be indoors and off my head and have some methadone. Seriously, if I didn't have to get rid of the body (or do the necessary paperwork afterwards at the cop-shop), I would have murdered the twat. Instead, I verbally dismantled him on the balcony, shouting, "Don't you EVER fuckin' come round here again!"

If I see the cunt on the street I will probably eviscerate the fucking dog!

HAPPY, HAPPY TALKING, HAPPY TALK:

It's not all bad: I pulled out from the depression, been seeing the good nutters from meetings etc. I spoke to my father the other day, who lives in OZ - not aurally transmitted with him for ten years, so that was OK. I've still got the funding for rehab, and today I've been seeing about visiting another one. This time I reckon I'll venture north, try a place where some celebrities went to. The UK tour of recovery is now official; with wailing guitar feedback!

Please, no photographs! Piss-off!

LONDON'S BURNING (la-la-la-la-lah):

@Kay and Captain Roadscum: Thankee for the mind-boost; I appreciate the good-stuff!

@lexmachine: One of my cheap slags said, "Chicken soup!" But she was damaged, and insane...and from Greece!

@Vorn: If you get a cane, we can team-up; form a Legion of Bastards with secret compartments on our sticks. Compartments full of mini-nukes, that sorta thing.